June Huh Receives 2019 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize

June Huh, Visiting Professor in the School of Mathematics, has received the 2019 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize as part of the Breakthrough Prize series. Huh is recognized for the development of combinatorial Hodge theory leading to the resolution of the log-concavity conjecture of Rota as part of a collaboration with mathematicians Eric Katz of Ohio State University and Karim Adiprasito of Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The prize, which will be shared between Huh and Adiprasito, will be featured at the 2019 Breakthrough Prize ceremony on Sunday, November 4, 2018, and presented at the Breakthrough Prize Scientific Symposium on November 5. Up to three New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes are awarded annually to junior researchers in mathematics who have produced significant work in their fields.

For Huh, who at one time never imagined a future for himself in mathematics, this prize is all the more remarkable. Huh shared the extraordinary story of what led him to this field of study in a profile in Quanta Magazine that can be read here.

At the Institute, Huh applies tropical geometry and singularity theory to problems in combinatorics and other areas. His recent interests include singularities of projective hypersurfaces, correlation phenomenon for models in statistical physics, and connections between realizability problems in algebraic geometry and combinatorial geometry.

June Huh received his B.S. from Seoul National University in 2007 and Ph.D. from University of Michigan in 2014. Since then, he has been a Clay Fellow and is a current Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton with funding provided by the Ellentuck Fund and the National Science Foundation. He was a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2018.

The Breakthrough Prizes are sponsored by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Ma Huateng, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. Selection committees composed of previous Breakthrough Prize laureates in each field choose the winners.

Read more about the 2019 laureates here.